A lost art needs doctorates!

What might be called the terminal moraine of education always leaves you with interesting morsels, even if the main thrust of what was being taught to you has long since faded into anonymity in the spongier grey areas of your brain. Sometimes you are left with interesting facts; sometimes with interesting words and sometimes with interesting names.

Michael Palæologus is such a name for me. I know that one of him (there were lots of Michaels in the Imperial line) was connected with the last years of the last dynasty when Byzantium was interesting and therefore he must have been an emperor at a time of wonderful decadence – at least if you were an emperor.

It’s the concept of decadence and self indulgence and sheer pleasure that strangely interests me. We have so many people dealing with the Big Things of Life like Global Warming; the Problems of the Middle East and Why That Woman Is Still Surviving, that the small essential things just get ignored.

A case in point is The Art of Scratching; and thus we return to old Michael Palæologus. I’m sure that in the (what’s the word for the shining luminescence of rotting fish?) – using what I said in parenthesis as an adjective – terminal decadence of the Byzantine Empire there must have been a whole sub culture devoted to The Art of Scratching. Well, there would be in my version of Decline and Fall!

Just consider, for most people who stop to consider, the term ‘scratching’ will refer to the DJ technique which used to use the method of hand manipulating of a vinyl disc to obtain odd musical rhythmic sounds (they now use digital) in shady night clubs rather than the noble art of giving (human) digital (keratin enhanced) pleasure by the gentle raking of the skin.

There are so many different types of scratching: the scratch direct which is a full five nailed downward travel; the scratch particular which targets a know area of scratch need; the scratch composite where the scratching can incorporate some massage; the scratch inventive which can utilize the different qualities of harness found in calloused and hard skin; the scratch light which is barely perceptible yet highly valued by the cognoscenti of the scratching fraternity. You can see the vast possibilities and you can imagine the even more vast literature which must exist.

There must have been Byzantine enamels which commemorated the lives of special slaves who had shown the emperor special attention in the scratching department; murals which must have placed Imperial Scratchers in positions of importance on the right hand of the imperial personage; illuminated manuscripts which detailed the techniques of scratching with jewel-like representations of scratchers at work. Perhaps all these treasures were lost when the Library at Alexandria went up in flames in the most libracidal disaster in the history of the world. What lost tomes of scratching lore and technique might have been lost? Ah well, when we finally discover the Library of Lost Books (in which all true bibliophiles believe as an act of faith) all will be revealed and a new liberated age of rediscovered scratching will benefit the world.

I realise that this must seem one too self indulgent digression too far, but what the hell!

On slightly more level intellectual terms I have, at long last, joined the select ranks of those who, in the United Kingdom, actually own real Mecano CDs. I bought the complete works on eight CDs of which seven work: the eighth being the one bloody one in the pack that doesn’t work, and of course, also continuing the run of Bad Things Happening, which also includes the fact that Carmen Snr is ill today and mere words cannot describe the wait that I had while purchasing the above mentioned discs. (The poxy cashier actually used the phone ten times (10!) because, as far as I could tell, one poxy digit did not match on the mass of paperwork that the two ladies just in front of me in the queue presented.

I am told such things are good for the soul, but, as I do not believe that I have one, such pathetic, maundering, sententious, mendacious sayings rather pass me by.

I will retain my justified resentment at the vicissitudes of this unjust world.

Though, at the moment, the food is quite good!